24/7 startups, and unexpected pitfalls?

[ppdude]

On 12/1/2021 at 12:23 PM, WBxx said:

Have not setup automated reorder for diapers, or for that matter anything, out of fear I’ll change my mind and not be unable to stop the reordering.  It’s a matter of control for me.

I had the same concerns and am also a control freak. But XP Medical talked me into it and I obliged. It's easy to make adjustments if necessary, but I have not as it works out very well. Northshore also has a good system that is easy to adjust. Makes one less thing to do and easier to manage. I recommend it highly.

 

[Little Sherri]

There was an interesting article in the New York Times about a company in Japan that developed a process for pelletizing waste adult diapers, and using them as fuel. Apparently the quantity of diapers hitting the waste stream (pun intended) in Japan has been on the rise for years, and I'm sure all of you by now have read the stat, much reported, that adult diaper sales now outnumber baby diaper sales in Japan, because of their aging demographics. A rehabilitation hospital that has 80% of their patients wearing diapers, teamed up with the equipment supplier, to create a feedstock for a boiler used to heat spring water at a local hot springs "park" or "resort" or whatever you'd call it, where people come to soak in hot spring water for alleged health benefits, or just because it feels good, I guess. 

They said that whereas just incinerating the diapers requires fuel - most trash in Japan is apparently incinerated - this process results in a net positive energy output that is offsetting the use of natural gas to heat the water. 

Encouraged by this, I am planning to start burning my diapers for heat in the stove in my garage... kidding. Apparently in order to make them suitable for use as a fuel, they need to be mulched and fermented (I can only imagine the stench is ungodly), then sanitized and dried at 170 F, before being pelletized and fed into a burner that is designed to use them. 

Speaking of fermentation, I made an observation this weekend, while wearing a crappy low-end store-bought diaper, among the last of the Tena's that my wife misguidedly bought for me a few weeks ago. I was wearing it because I spent the day putting lights up on pine trees, and knew I would be emerging covered in needles and sap, and needing a shower. Because I wasn't sure how long I'd be in the saddle, I decided to use a Pampers Swaddlers Size 7 as a stuffer, so I perforated its shell a bit, and installed it in the Tena, which effectively more or less doubles its capacity. 

However, it also had another effect. I ended up being in that combination for about 9 hours, during which I consumed some beer, and, being exhausted, I once again elected to lie down on my bed, "just for a second", and I fell into a deep sleep and awoke at 4 AM, realizing that I needed to change and brush my teeth. When I took the diaper off, now probably in hour 15 or so, I was expecting a "portable toilet in summer" stench to emerge, because that's what usually happens in low-end diapers that have been at body temperature for too long, but to my surprise, the Pampers alchemy had managed to keep all the fluid that soaked into, or passed through them, smelling baby fresh. 

[Little Sherri]

I had a bit of a self-inflicted diaper emergency yesterday evening...  I was cleaning the ice maker in the kitchen, and my youngest was was helping her mom wash dishes, when, suddenly inspired to mischief, I thought it would be hilarious to picked up a handful of ice cubes and drop them down the back of her shirt. She screamed and turned around and started frantically pulling her shirt out of her pants, and then she said "DAD!!!! One of them went in my DIAPER!!!!", which surprised me, because she never uses the "D" word these days - they're pull-ups for Goodnites, and don't you dare call them anything else. But euphemisms went out the window in her shocked state, I guess. 

Turnabouts is fair play, though, because later I was washing some of my brewing equipment, and my wife dropped a handful of ice cubes down MY back, while my daughter watched. I was wearing a diaper shirt, so of course, they all got funneled down around my diaper, although none actually went in it. But some were trapped between the bottom of the snap-T, and the plastic Megamax, so I had to go into the washroom to get them out. When I came back, my wife whispered "Some of those ended up in your diaper, too, didn't they?", with obvious enjoyment. We used to play pranks on each other where we'd drop an ice cube or a wet paper towel down the back of each other's pants when we weren't expecting it, but I have largely scuttled those shenanigans, because these days I'm always in a diaper, and I don't want one of the kids pulling the waistband of my jeans open and discovering a smooth vista of white plastic, or plastic festooned with winged ponies or cartoon monsters or whatever. 

Speaking of waistbands, my wife had a handful of mine over the weekend when we were decorating the Christmas tree. Background - trees are allegedly supposed to be in short supply this year, so when the place we usually go to was out of "medium" trees, we decided to buy a larger one, rather than a "Charlie Brown" 5-foot twig. However, the tree we got is so fat that, when decorating the top of it, the stepstool I was on was so far out from the centerline of the tree, that I had to lean precariously out to reach the top, and at one point the stool actually tipped a bit. So I asked her if she'd grab my belt while I put the star on, to lesson the likelihood that I'd end up falling into the tree, and take the whole thing to the ground with me. 

Instead, she grabbed the whole back of the waistband of my jeans, including a handful of another Megamax (pink, unfortunately), and started pulling backwards like a tow truck, to the point that she almost dragged me off the stool, so I had to say, hey, wait until I'm actually cantilevered out over the tree, before applying counterforce. The diaper was bone dry that far up the back, or else I'd probably be Googling divorce lawyers this week. 

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, my wife sent me an hilarious video today. For reasons known only to the postal service, my latest order of diapers got diverted to the post office, rather than dropped off at my house as they usually are, and my wife got a notice in our mailbox that there was a package there for us. This being the holidays, she drove over to the post office to pick it up, and then she sent me a video of her standing in the post office, looking down at the box, speaking in a sarcastic tone, saying something along the lines of "So, it's Christmas, and you find a note in your mailbox that there's a parcel for you, and of course you want to get it right away, because who knows what it might be. So I rushed over to pick it up, and they handed me... this. I'm pretty sure it's a big box of diapers. And now I have to carry it out to the car and drive it home and carry it into the house. Merry Christmas. Maybe I'll wrap it up and put it under the tree!"

She narrated that while looking at it, on the floor of the post office. I have no idea of anyone was standing anywhere near her or not. 

The box in question is part of an attempt to find a compact diaper that I can fit a dozen or so of, into my luggage, when I go on that golfing trip with my buddies after Christmas. My slim, gym diapers are a bit too compact - they're only good for a few hours in the saddle, and every once in a while, I rip a tab off when I stretch them out so I can fit into them. That will be inconvenient when I'm 14 hours from home. I'll bring some bigger, plastic diapers, but they'll be for overnight. I'm looking for a medium-duty, fairly slim product for wearing on the golf course primarily. My Rearz Active Airs are probably the best product I have for that purpose, and I already have them in stock, but the ones I bought, which are a larger version of my Prevail gym diapers, look slimmer than those, at least on paper. 

I have one on now. They are slimmer than the Active Airs, but, they also rise really high on me, front and back - I feel like a  toddler who's been put into a size 7 diaper designed for older kids. The stretchy sides and cloth covering are very Pampers Cruiser like as well, although their light blue colouration and prominent wetness indicator speak more of palliative care than of the nursery. At least they're comfortable, I know that they won't cut into me or give me rashes. I don't know if I'll take these with me or not, but I'm casting about for solutions, and it seemed worth trying them out. The fact that my wife had to deliver them is just icing on the cake, I guess. 

[Little Sherri]

So the large size of my gym diapers definitely provide more range, and while they do go half way up my back, they are very slim, and I will have a diaper shirt on the entire time I'm there, I'm sure, other than maybe when I'm asleep. These being breathable diapers, another issue has cropped up, one that I never noticed before, because the medium-sized version of these only gives me a few hours of range at the most, and in fact I am often disposing of it sooner than that, because after a martial arts class, I'm taking a shower, guaranteed. The issue in question came to my attention slowly, last night, as I was watching TV in bed with my wife, lounging in the aforementioned diaper and a t-shirt. The first low tendrils of an "off" odor reached my nostrils, and I briefly suspected that the origins were actually my socks, which I had had on, in rubber boots, while clearing snow off the driveway earlier, so I pitched them into the laundry and rinsed my feet off in the shower stall. I didn't take a shower because I wanted to continue field-testing the new diaper. 

Another chapter of my book went by, and still, I was smelling... something. It was not the signature untended-toddler ammonia scent, it was something a bit more acrid. Very low PPM concentration, but, like leaking gas, still attention-getting. I looked around for a source. I eyed the dog. He was asleep. Eventually, I became concerned that my wife, sitting a couple of feet from me, might also be detecting it, although, mercifully, my sense of smell has always been more acute than hers. (I'm always the one noting that the dog needs to go out, because he starts silently flatulating, for example). There was no other obvious probable source, beside my soggy baby pants. I had not recently had asparagus. However, I decided to go into the bathroom, and survey the climate down there.

Sure enough, when I cracked the diaper open, the offending scent was much more notable. "Breathable diapers" fail again. If air can get in, air can get out. But I was also surprised that whatever the magic ingredient in Pampers and Megamax's might be, it was absent here. I guess they figure that nobody wears these things for more than a few hours, anyway, and that the building probably already smells like diapers, because it is most likely a hospice...

[ppdude]

9 minutes ago, Little Sherri said:

So the large size of my gym diapers definitely provide more range, and while they do go half way up my back, they are very slim, and I will have a diaper shirt on the entire time I'm there...

This could be a little off topic, but for some reason, I'm having a hard time finding diaper shirts of solid colors other than black or white. where, per chance, are you getting your shirts from? (baby-pants has become a non-starter for me). Any suggestions?

 

9 minutes ago, Little Sherri said:

 

 

[Little Sherri]

5 minutes ago, ppdude said:

Any suggestions?

Have you had a look at Rearz? Here is the link: https://rearz.ca/clothing/snapsuits/ 

They have black and white ones, which are most of what I own, but they also have a bunch of printed options, as well as light blue ones, pink ones, and grey polo shirt ones. 

[ppdude]

48 minutes ago, Little Sherri said:

Have you had a look at Rearz? Here is the link: https://rearz.ca/clothing/snapsuits/ 

They have black and white ones, which are most of what I own, but they also have a bunch of printed options, as well as light blue ones, pink ones, and grey polo shirt ones. 

Thanks! For some unknown reason, Rearz is missing from my list. Sounds exactly what I'm looking for!

 

 

[Little Sherri]

Funny enough, I was reading and replying to a thread here yesterday about diaper dreams, related to if people wear them when dreaming, and then, of course, I had one last night, and it resulted in a diaper-dream near-miss, related to the positioning of the equipment down below. 

In the dream, I was waiting in line for something, and it wasn't clear what - either something I wanted to buy, or maybe concert tickets, or at the MTO (what we call the DMV in Canada). Anyway, in the dream, I suddenly felt like I had to pee, and I was thinking, oh crap, I'm going to have to get out of line, this is going to take forever... and then I had an epiphany... wait, aren't I wearing a diaper? YES! Yes I am! Excellent. So, without further consideration, I stopped clenching up. But then I got an urgent warning from the command center hovering above the dream ocean, that I needed to emerge from beneath the waves of consciousness, and into reality asap, because my belly felt wet. I kind of half woke up and realized I was sleeping on my front, and advancing wetness was indeed present in the belly button zone. 

Long-time readers will know that I can't really slam the brakes on, once I start going, anymore, and definitely not if I really have to go, which was apparently the situation last night, so as I woke up... and I apologize for the mental images I am about to paint - I jammed my hand straight down into my diaper and rolled over onto my back at the same time. "Mini-Me" was facing straight up and delivering like a fire hose, and once I stuffed him down into the diaper, I carefully surveyed my situation, as best I could, in the dark. 

I had one wet hand that needed to be washed. A feel around my midriff with the other hand showed that, miraculously, my t-shirt did not seem to be wet at all. I felt around my sides and down to the sheets... dry. Could I now be laying on a wet spot, from when I was front-down? I slid out and then felt around with my dry hand. Nope. I waddled into the bathroom and flicked on the lights, then washed my hand, and had a look at myself in the mirror. The size large Megamax I was wearing was distending a bit in the front, and patting it on the outside, up around the waistband, showed that it was really wet, just below the elastic, but, incredibly, it had done its job and contained the deluge. Had I kept rolling with the dream, I'm sure I would have soaked the sheets, though. I ran some paper towel around the top of the diaper, just to make sure no free dribbles were lingering, shrugged, and then went back to bed. Two thumbs way up for Megamax! 

 

[Little Sherri]

Well, I have an addendum to affix to the above... I was talking with @oznl on his entertaining "Strange Days Indeed" 24/7 blog, about the fact that we both have about the same inventory of diapers on hand. This is not entirely surprising since I have been more or less following in his footsteps, and following his advice, and so have also landed on a "two-good-nappies-per-day" habit, as being more economical and reliable than four cheap ones. And, as he pointed out, in some ways, we sort of do (or did) the same thing, he a consultant for IT network infrastructure, transferring ideas and dreams and services in the form of electrons, and me with pipes and pumps and motors and heat exchangers and vacuum chambers, helping people turn tar into jet fuel and asbestos into baby food. 

We were both saying that we had enough diapers on hand to last until April. Great minds. 

Further proof that the Universe has a sense of humour, enter, stage left, my wife, suddenly manic for cleaning and organizing, a condition which struck her sometime this morning, while I was in my office. She called me down to the basement with a self-satisfied tone that worried me slightly... had she rerouted some electrical? Purged the boiler? No. She'd discovered that I, in a very disorganized fashion, had several boxes of diapers that were open, rather than being smart about it, and, say, wearing a Rearz Mermaid Tale or an Alpaca every night and every day, until all of them were gone, and then moving on to wear, say, all of my Bambino Classico's in a row, for two weeks. So, she stacked all of the unopened boxes onto one shelf, and she collapsed all the opened boxes into two giant, casket-sized opaque totes, which, admittedly, probably offer more protection from moisture and prying eyes, than the cardboard did, BUT, in the process, she surveyed ALL of my diapers. 

The way that she organized them was interesting... by colour. So there were a few outlier pink Megamax's and Princess Pink's, which then transitioned to Lil' Squirts and Lil' Bella's, then Classicos and Teddy's, into Mermaid Tales and Lil' Monsters, then to Alpacas and Barnyards. The second casket was all the white, or mostly white ones. She strongly urged me to use up the open ones first. She said the word "diapers" about 27 times, which is more than I have heard her ever say that word. Usually, she either refers to them tangentially, as "those", or, if she's feeling humourous, she calls them "Pampers". 

She did go back to the word Pampers once, when she said "I don't think you'll be needing any more Pampers until at least March, can we agree on that?" 

I have to admit, though, that her saying that put a bit of lightness into my step, despite my vague irritation that she'd decided to embark on organizing my diaper stash, without consulting me, and had, in the process, surveyed some very private material. Because she COULD have said "Enough is enough, when is this stupidity going to end, it's been almost three years, haven't you had your fun playing dress-up, Mr. Toddler?" But, instead, she told me when she thinks it would be reasonable to reorder diapers again. I shall likely violate her edict with gusto, but, it's the thought that counts. 

[ppdude]

On 12/9/2021 at 11:49 AM, Little Sherri said:

Have you had a look at Rearz? Here is the link: https://rearz.ca/clothing/snapsuits/ 

They have black and white ones, which are most of what I own, but they also have a bunch of printed options, as well as light blue ones, pink ones, and grey polo shirt ones. 

Big time THANK YOU for cluing me in... Found the exact onesies from Rearz in black, gray, and blue polo styles! Only problem -- they're out of stock or clearing out almost everything! Having them email when they come back into stock. Hope it's fairly soon.

 

 

[BabyJilly_S]

I always wondered what others did with the "mini-me" situation. I have never felt comfortable to ask the question, though it easily described and asked. But as you have sort of opened the door  

Personally I tuck before bed so he's pointing down. It still happens though in a bodily response to stop me going. I then wake up and have to "talk myself down" as it were....I  still refuse to get up, it has to happen in bed.

The question being though is there any way to stop this automatic mechanism from happening? After all we have taken the decision and turned off the requirement to be dry and have put in significant counter measures... I  guess it still happens when we fall into a deeper sleep?

Does it stop after a longer while? I have been at this over a year now and whilst I am now 100% sure I wet (I went to bed dry the other day and awoke to the alarm and was pretty soggy which felt good hehe) I had hoped that particular functionality may fade away. 

I think the wifely organisation is a great upturn for you given your previous recollections. I hope it leads to something more.

[Little Sherri]

6 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

Does it stop after a longer while?

Unfortunately, my understanding of how these things work is that the only way that males of the species will stop having periodic turgidity while in REM sleep, is if you develop legitimate physiological erectile disfunction. One of the ways that they try to sort out if someone's ED is psychological or physiological, is to try and determine if they can still get a chubby when they're in REM sleep. If they can, then, their ED issue is not purely physical. 

As to how I have managed to occasionally wet my diaper without peeing up myself, I can only surmise that it's happening during a point in the sleep cycle where I'm not "standing at attention", or haven't just been doing so. Happily, nature assists with this, in that it takes considerable effort to "go" when the equipment is in the ready position. But I don't wet a lot overnight. I might toss this baton to @oznl; perhaps he can comment as to how that works in his experience. He is further down the bedwetting road than I am. 

I know that as a kid, it wasn't often an issue, I think because my bedwetting back then waned around the time I was going through puberty, so, there were maybe a couple of incidents where I peed over the top of my diaper while in a deep sleep, but, by that time, I was usually staying dry overnight. 

In the interest of science, and because my wife put them in the uppermost box in my basement when she did her reorganization of my diaper inventory, I am trying to once again wear a Mermaid Tale for 24 hours. I put it on last night at about 9 PM, so right now I have 7 hours left in it. I had thought that today might be a good day for it, because I didn't think I needed to go anywhere, however, fate intervened, and my wife asked me to go out with her over lunch and buy several bottles of liquor and wine as gifts for her clients. She knows nothing of these things and wanted me to make the selections. So, I pulled on my biggest pair of baggy jeans, and waddled around the store, trying to match bottle selections to what she thought people's tastes probably were. 

I didn't wet at all overnight, so the experiment really started this morning. Right now, the diaper has bulked up noticeably, but it's not yet unmanageable. I may have to resort to reading in bed after dinner tonight, to avoid having to walk the halls in a diaper that may be, by then, the size of a generous pillow, while my kids are still up. I'm hoping my wife asks me why I'm wearing it, so that I can say I thought it was her wish, based on how she placed them in the diaper storage system she created. 

In other news, I was told a crazy story this weekend that, for reasons which shall become obvious, I had to share here.

So, I was at a bar in another town about 20 minutes from here, with a couple of buddies, and one of my friends starts telling me this crazy story about his son and his wife:

His wife is a rabid eco-warrior, save the trees, save the whales, organic everything type person. Which is cool, to each their own, and yes, the environment is important. She buys organic laundry soaps and composts everything. They have two sons, one 7, one 10, and the 7-year-old still wears pull-ups a lot of the time. I already knew about that - him and I have talked about it before, and I told him about our experiences with my daughter. His son has ADHD and can't sit still for 20 seconds, and he gets excited and starts jumping up and down when anything changes - say, they're going out somewhere, or, they're going to put a movie on, or it's time for dinner, whatever. Anyway, when the kid has these "fits" (as they call them), where he starts jumping up and down and clasping his hands and making faces, sometimes he pees his pants. So when he's not at school, they often keep in pull-ups. 

So, about a year ago, his wife met some lady at an event, and this lady runs a company importing organic cloth diapers from Vietnam. They start talking and the lady convinces my buddy's wife to buy a bunch of the cloth diapers, and some plastic pants, for their son, because they're SO much better for the environment, and also allegedly better for his skin. So she tells my buddy that they're going to stop buying pull-ups and start putting these organic cloth diapers on their son. Apparently it was a fight at first because they're a lot bulkier than pull-ups and they feel wetter, and he said the first few times they put them on him, they had to almost hold him down. And the first time they took him anywhere in them, to a birthday party, it took a half hour to talk the kid into getting out of the car, because he was so worried someone would see or hear his plastic pants under his jeans. 

After a while, the kid apparently got used to it, and he was spending maybe half of most days, in these cloth diapers. Well, mom was washing the organic cloth diapers with organic soap, and washing them in cold water, and hanging them to dry as much as possible, all very ecologically sound, but, maybe not the best way to sanitize diapers. So, after close to 7 or 8 months wearing cloth diapers, his kid gets a crazy rash all over his diaper area - spots and sores and bumps, and everything down there is bright red. They're putting half a tub of diaper cream on him every day, and it's not helping. So they take the kid to a walk-in clinic, but they put him in underwear for the appointment, and the first doctor they see is young and relatively new.

The doctor immediately says that he thinks the kid has... herpes. Yeah. And he starts asking questions about if either of them have herpes, which they don't, and if not, who else has been around the kid, and even says that he might need to refer them to social services. So they are freaking out, his wife is in tears, and my buddy says, I want a referral to a dermatologist - this makes no sense, there is no way that their 7-year-old has contracted herpes. So they get an urgent referral and they take the kid to a specialist downtown the following week, only this time, they put the kid in one of the cloth diapers, because it's like a 60 minute drive each way plus they waited at the office for two hours before being seen by the guy. 

As soon as they walk in and tell the story, the doctor says, okay, I need to take a look, so they lay the kid down on the exam table and open up his diaper. The first thing the doctor asks is, how much time does he spend in cloth diapers, and, how do you wash them? She explains that they wash them in cold using beeswax soap or whatever, and they hang them to dry. The doctor says, okay, I know what the problem is, this kid does not have herpes. He writes them a prescription for an ointment, and says put the kid in disposables for at least a couple of weeks, until the rash goes away, and after that, if you want to go back to putting him in cloth diapers, you have to wash them in hot water with bleach, and dry them on high, because the diapers were not getting sanitized and had built up a huge population of bacteria, that was giving the kid the crazy rash. 

They put him in disposables and used the ointment, and he said the rash went away within a few days. Now, they're going to try putting him back in cloth diapers maybe every second day, to give his skin a chance to recover, and they're using the sanitize cycle and real soap, and the dryer, when they wash his diapers, and hopefully the rash doesn't come back, but he says if it does, he's burning the cloth diapers, and he doesn't care what his wife thinks about it. 

[Little Sherri]

Quick note… I am 10 minutes away from having been in this Mermaid Tale for 24 hours. As I noted earlier, it took no fire overnight as far as I could tell, but it was slightly damp going in, as I’d had it on from 9 PM. Currently it is awkwardly large, and I am wearing a diaper shirt and seriously oversized pajama pants in order to constrain and disguise it, although the crinkling does not escape my notice. However, my wife and my youngest are out, and my oldest is in her own world, so, I have been able to operate despite the hilarious current proportions of this diaper. 
 

It is showing no signs of giving up the fight, there have been no press-out leaks, and while I wouldn’t board an aircraft dressed thusly, if I needed milk, I’d probably go get it. I walked the dog earlier. I have had the diaper off for the other of nature’s callings, and I can say that there is no otherworldly fermentation going on inside of it, as far as my nose knows. I have no “impending sunburn” feeling yet. All told, Rearz has a laudable submission to the 24 hour diaper category with the Mermaid Tale. I don’t think there are actually 7000 millilitres in it, but, I don’t think I produce 7000 millilitres in 24 hours anyway. Maybe if I drank the whole time, but then I’d be unconscious, rather than writing a nappy review.

And there we are, 10 minutes has passed, sound the bells, it’s been exactly 24 hours. I’m going to leave this on until I’m ready to shower, so unless you hear differently from me in the ensuing 90 minutes or so, I will have been macerating in this remarkably comfortable diaper for ~25 + hours when it hits the bin.

[oznl]

12 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I might toss this baton to @oznl; perhaps he can comment as to how that works in his experience. He is further down the bedwetting road than I am.

It’s a thing and funnily enough, it seems to be much more marked for me in recent weeks:  It’s happened before for sure but for the last week or two, it seems to be nearly and every night thing. I’ve no idea why and it’s annoying.  I hope it passes soon.  It's just another thing getting in the way of sleep.

I’ve actually been google-researching this and I might make it the subject of an update to avoid hijacking @Little Sherri's thread.

By the time I wake up and realise this is happening, I suspect I’ve usually already peed once.  I believe most of my “bedwetting” events are most likely to happen for me between 1am and 3am.  I’ve often wondered if it’s the “warm wet” sensation that brings on uninvited tumescence but at 4am, it’s just annoying rather than exciting (the tumescence, the wet nappy doesn't annoy me at all!)

Secondly, I *usually* remain pointing down anyway (although it can be uncomfortable).  I’ve actually had pee dreams that seem to relate to my inability to wet my nappy easily due to unwanted (and sexually irrelevant) nocturnal tumescence.  I wake, rearrange myself, wet almost instantly before falling back asleep when this has happened.

If you can manage it, cloth nappies are a free kick here.  I find I can wet in ANY position and it simply doesn’t matter.  Pointing up?  Nil desperandum.  Go for it.  You’ll be fine.  I don’t even bother to point down when in cloth.  It simply doesn’t matter.

@BabyJilly_S the only other obiter-dictum point I’d make here is that I STRONGLY recommend going to sleep (a bit) wet already.  You don't need to be soaked, just a little damp is fine.  For me, this massively lowered the bar for subsequent sleep wetting events.  It makes detecting that first sleep-wetting a bit blurry but that’s how it goes.  For sure I absolutely knew I'd "wet the bed" on a rare night I went to bed dry and woke up not but the vector by which it became a trend was waking up wetter than I was before.  I'd probably been intermittently bed wetting for months before I "proved" it to myself.

[BabyJilly_S]

Thanks @oznl I am trying to do that when I remember. Still plenty of waking up to go though during the night, not sure of the time of those as I cover my alarm clock because the digital display is so bright you could probably see it from space.....  

[BabyJilly_S]

@Little Sherri Oh I should say well done on the 24 hours. It is a very long time and is not only a testament to the diaper but you as well. How did you manage to ensure a full "spread" rather than it all being concentrated up front with the inevitable press out leaks? 

Seemingly I couldn't contemplate such a thing myself, during the day whenever my diaper reaches a certain fill level it becomes quite uncomfortable and the red "change me" light comes on in my head. It is such that if I were in a little space I may even begin sniffling, grumbling and playing up until I was changed. 

[Little Sherri]

6 hours ago, BabyJilly_S said:

How did you manage to ensure a full "spread" rather than it all being concentrated up front with the inevitable press out leaks? 

That was definitely part of the planning. Normally I just wear a diaper and whatever happens, happens, and I don't pay much attention to how it, or I, are positioned, but in this case once I realized that the front was approaching max capacity, I tried to tilt well back in my chair periodically in order to involve more of the padding up the back. I knew I was going to be pushing the boundaries of what was possible, so I wanted to give the diaper every advantage possible. 

I had a different experience today; I wore a Rearz Select (the single tab version of the Inspire) to bed, and I guess I tossed around energetically or whatever, because this morning one of the leg gathers had come apart - the elastic had pulled out. But the diaper itself wasn't all that wet, so I put on plastic pants and tried to see how far I could go in it. That decision led to my having to wash my pajama pants by about noon. I had underestimated the structural damage to the garment, I guess. The other possible explanation for the damage is that, after I put it on, I moved a bunch of boxes around in the basement and was stepping over objects - maybe I overstretched it. Although my experience with them is that generally you can more or less do anything in them, outside of maybe prolonged running. Now I'm in a gym diaper because I'm hoping to get to the gym around dinner, before they close them all down again, thanks to the Omicron variant's apparent virality. 

[Little Sherri]

I got my wife to say the "D" word and the "P word" last night... this is becoming a record-breaking month in that regard. Background - we have a heated towel rack in our bathroom; it was there when we moved in. I don't find it to be an amazing feature, because it's about 20 inches high, with three heated bars across it, so a bath towel would have to be more or less wrapped around it in order to get the full effect, and, it takes a while to heat up. However, I have discovered the decadent luxury of... preheated diapers. A diaper folded over the top of the rack touches it on both sides and heats up pretty convincingly in the time it takes to have a shower. So, I went into the bathroom and slung my next diaper over the rack (a Lil' Bella), preparing to shower, but then I got distracted and ran around the house distributing toilet paper to all the bathrooms. I came back into the bedroom, and of course, my beloved had decided to occupy the bathroom in that interval. So, I sat on my side of the bed and read my book and hoped that my current diaper wouldn't leak.

When my wife came out of the bathroom, she said "Are you using the towel rack to heat up your diaper?" I briefly felt like I'd been caught at something, akin to stealing from the cookie jar, but then I checked my initial reaction - it's my bathroom, my towel rack... what exactly did I need to explain? So, I shrugged and said "Yes - that thing is largely useless for towels, but, it works great on diapers..."

"Well, I hope you enjoy your toasty Pampers. Just don't start a fire." 

I'm also testing the waters as to what her current preferences are for diaper cream. She texted me this morning and asked me if I needed anything from the pharmacy, and I do - a prescription refill - but I realized that I'm also almost out of diaper cream, and I couldn't resist mentioning it. Seeing it in writing was interesting - if felt like a bit of an "affirmation". I texted:

- My prescription

- Diaper cream

Let's see what comes of it. 

[oznl]

6 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

When my wife came out of the bathroom, she said "Are you using the towel rack to heat up your diaper?"

Here at 25 degrees south latitude in mid December, I briefly thought about the odds of fast-tracking my way to bachelorhood by keeping a nappy or two in the beer fridge in the garage...

[jeremy12312]

@Little Sherri Since you’re well-versed in the Rearz line…

I picked up a case of Mermaid Tales a little bit ago, and I’m quite fond of both the plastic and the super-soft padding. It seems others are finding the same, because they’re running out of stock. 

I hadn’t ordered from Rearz since the Safari was their main seller, do the other lines have the same plastic and softness, or is that exclusive to the Mermaids?

[Little Sherri]

3 hours ago, jeremy12312 said:

do the other lines have the same plastic and softness, or is that exclusive to the Mermaids?

I find the Mermaid Tales to be really plush, which makes sense, given their high capacity. The plastic feels the same to me as their other products. Right now I have a pretty broad cross-section of Rearz diapers in my inventory: Lil' Bella, Monsters and Squirts, Barnyards, Mermaid Tales, Alpaca's, Princess Pink's, Elite Hybrid's, and the single-tape Selects. I'm wearing a Bambino Teddy right now right now, and I'd say that the plastic is maybe a bit thinner than most of the Rearz products, but that is strictly a subjective impression. 

Well, my wife bought my diaper cream, and she really went premium - she bought a giant tub of Desitin. I tend to prefer the store-brand diaper creams with their baby powder scent, but, it will be interesting to see how the vaunted Desitin performs; it's sort of the Mercedes of diaper creams. It has what I would describe as a clean scent, your average hand lotion scent experience. Which is fine, I have baby powder if I want to smell like baby powder. 

I wore an Elite Hybrid two days ago, in a non-scientific attempt to compare it to a Mermaid Tale. The Elite performed well. I got about 18 hours out of it, and could have gone for more, but I was facing going to bed in a soaked diaper, if I wanted to squeeze the last few hours out of it, a recipe for leaks, and possibly also diaper rash. Plus, I would have had to parade from our bathroom, past my wife's side of the bed, over to my side, in an inflated, saggy, possibly slightly yellow diaper. The optics of that did not appeal to me, so I swapped it for a pink Megamax, being one of the "unpackaged" diapers that my wife wants me to use up before tearing into the unopened cases. 

This will be my third Christmas lived entirely in diapers, and my second Christmas overshadowed by the pandemic. I had thought that things would be "pretty normal", now that we're all double-vaccinated, but then the Omicron variant descended upon us. It seems to be able to gleefully infect the fully vaccinated, prompting a rush to get boosters into everyone's arms. The resulting illness, if you get it, is mild, but, you still end up quarantining as though you have the black plague. They've also slapped gathering limits back on, after removing them completely. Right now we can only have groups of 10 together. All of this makes for excellent conditions for diaper lounging. 

Hopefully most of you don't have your holidays interrupted, but if you do, I hope you can at least spend them securely padded. 

[Little Sherri]

The Omicron variant of Covid has arrived and sent us all back to Christmas 2020. Gathering restrictions are back in effect, owing to its seeming ability to infect the double-vaccinated, although the outcome of such infections appears to be almost universally minor. I've brewed a West Coast Pale Ale and now wish I'd made it stronger. It's 5.75%, which seemed like a good "sessionable" strength for sharing with friends and family who might have to drive, but, now that I'm likely going to be sitting at home alone with it, maybe I'll pour a bottle of Jack Daniel's into it and take it up a couple of points...

Being doomed to wander the corridors of my home, I have sequestered myself in my office and am getting as much work done as I can before we shut down for the holidays. Normally, I take these last few days off and turn Christmas into a 2-week vacation, but, with nowhere to go, and nobody coming over, I might as well keep my powder dry and see if I can make better use of the days off, sometime later. Maybe when the Certain Death variant emerges. 

I've been mining the far corners of my diaper collection and came up with an Alpaca this morning, a "variant" that I haven't encountered in a while. This is what Rearz refers to as an "overnight diaper", owing, I take it, to their bulk, relative to some of their other products. They are indeed fairly puffy in all directions. I find these to be about an 18-hour diaper in my experience, which takes them well past "overnight duty". I think that my concerns about the detectability of my diaper under my clothes are fading like my vaccine-induced Covid immunity; I would not wear an Alpaca out for drinks with friends or to tile a bathroom with a buddy, but, around the house, under jeans, I no longer give it much thought. 

My wife obviously knows I have a diaper on; in theory, my kids do not, but, I find they pay so little attention to me, or anything else going on that isn't happening in the "metaverse", that it's not worth my expending energy to be anxious about it. Case in point; I decided, on a lark, to just try on a Rearz Omutsu Velcro cloth diaper, and some plastic pants, and see how they concealed under oversized athletic pants - was there a chance I could wear that set over the holidays, other than late at night? I thought the answer was "no", because my derrière started to look like it had its own gravitational pull, but, right after I put them on, my wife asked me if I would retrieve a drink she left in the kitchen. It was 11 PM, so I figured the progeny were either asleep, or in all-night chat rooms with people from Belgium,  so I shrugged and walked down the stairs. While in the kitchen, I became distracted by loading the dishwasher with items that had helpfully been left within 24 inches of it... so, so close! It's like whoever had used them knew that they belonged in that general area, but once there, were unable to decode the next steps. It reminds me somewhat of rare occasions when the dog has somehow been overlooked and his maximum holding capacity has been exceeded. When that happens, he either, A) relieves himself right by the back door, or, B ) he does it in one of the bathrooms. He knows that the house has areas that are "less incorrect" for such deposits, than other areas. Nowhere are they "welcome", but, he has a dim idea of what management seems to prefer, given a choice between there, and, say, the carpet in the living room. 

So of course, because the Universe has a sense of humour, while I was loading the dishwasher in my giant puffy cloth diaper, Eldest Daughter made an appearance for the first time in a few days, and she brought 5 people into the room with her, most of them apparently from Quebec, based on the amount of French being spoken. She plunked her laptop on the counter and started whipping up an 11 PM espresso, as one does, while her 5 bilingual guests took in the view from where she'd deposited them, across our kitchen, and over to me. I quickly turned so that I was facing the panel, with my behind behind me, and side-shuffled out of the shot. My daughter walked back and forth from the fridge to the grinder to the espresso machine. She gave me a quick glance and an "Oh, hi", before carrying on with her preparations to, I assume, be up and caffeine-addled until dawn. 

At that point, it occurred to me that I could have been wearing a clown suit and walking on stilts, and they probably wouldn't have registered with her. I don't want to be too much of a cowboy about it, but, perhaps I am gradually becoming at peace with the fact that I have the vague proportions of someone who wears diapers all the time. So, much as it is likely inevitable that all of of us will eventually get Covid, it may also be inevitable the the slightly enhanced proportions of my southern hemisphere will fade into the background, and out of remarkability, at least for those who see me on a regular basis. 

[Little Sherri]

Apropos of nothing, I was reading a thread about some of the euphemisms employed for disposable underpants ("slips", "briefs", etc) and it reminded me of a fight I had with my sister when I was probably 8 or 9, and she would have been about 11 or 12. We squabbled over something, I have no idea what, she ended up saying I was being immature, and, with all the whit and timing of a perturbed elementary schooler, I responded that she, too, was immature. You can probably see where this is going. I shall attempt to recreate the moment. Basically, I was struggling for a euphemism that I could not summon; the term "pull-up" had not been mass-marketed yet, and in any case, the products available on store shelves were all tabbed diapers. But it wasn't just that - the term that I was staring in the face and trying to get around was "wears". Saying someone "wears diapers" painted them with a brush that I felt coated over the subtleties of my chronic bedwetter predicament. 

"I'M the one who's immature? Ha. You still wear diapers. It seems to me that YOU are the one who is immature." 

"I DON'T WEAR DIAPERS!"

"So what's that you have on there, then? Are you, or are you not, currently wearing a diaper?"

"Shut up!!!"

"So then.... you wear diapers, don't you? You know who else wears diapers? Babies."

"Babies wear diapers ALL THE TIME. I DON'T wear them ALL THE TIME. Only at night."

"That's still 'wearing diapers'. And sometimes mom makes you wear them so you don't pee in the car. You know, like a baby. So admit it. You. Wear. Diapers." 

At that point I'm sure I screamed bloody murder and ran off to tell my mom, while pulling my t-shirt down over my diaper until I'd stretched it almost to my knees. If it had been my brother, I would have levelled him, but there was no hitting girls in our house, so taking the dispute to a higher court was the only option I had. I'm sure my mom told my sister to stop teasing me, and my sister gloated under her breath, and I once again stewed in my love/hate relationship with my disposable plastic underwear. 

[Stroller]

16 hours ago, Little Sherri said:

I've been mining the far corners of my diaper collection and came up with an Alpaca this morning, a "variant" that I haven't encountered in a while. This is what Rearz refers to as an "overnight diaper", owing, I take it, to their bulk, relative to some of their other products. They are indeed fairly puffy in all directions. I find these to be about an 18-hour diaper in my experience, which takes them well past "overnight duty". I think that my concerns about the detectability of my diaper under my clothes are fading like my vaccine-induced Covid immunity; I would not wear an Alpaca out for drinks with friends or to tile a bathroom with a buddy, but, around the house, under jeans, I no longer give it much thought. 

All  matter of perspective...

...I'll probably wear an Alpaca on Xmas day with the family, including a trip to the pub & Xmas dinner.  Maybe with an added soaker.  That's on account of it being a bit more discreet than my usual cloth nappy - well, that and the difficulty of washing cloth nappies when the house is full of people who have to go past the washing machine to get a beer.  I've just switched out of cloth to disposables this morning, in anticipation of my mother-in-law arriving this afternoon.  My cloth nappies are in the washing machine right now, & I hope to have them put away before my Mummy/wife returns with her.  I'm currently in an Astronaut, & I need to fetch 2 or 3 days' of disposables from the garage to get me through Xmas.  My latest discovery is that wearing dungarees just about hides everything!

Mummy will be happy I'm in disposables for Xmas - she'll worry less about people noticing.  I probably worry a lot less than I should.